Hilton Head Reporter

Town of Hilton Head Island issued the following announcement on April 5.

The Hilton Head Island Town Council on Tuesday approved final reading of an ordinance that redraws the boundaries for the Island’s six Town Council wards. The new ward boundaries are effective immediately.

The ward boundary lines were updated as a part of redistricting - the once-in-a-decade process undertaken to determine which neighborhoods are grouped into wards. Redistricting utilizes federal census data to ensure each Town Council member represents about the same number of constituents. The Town was last redistricted in 2011.

Town Council established guiding principles for this important undertaking with the adoption of a resolution in December 2021. Those principles included a commitment to ensure maximum public participation in the process, keep districts as contiguous and compact as possible, and ensure Island neighborhoods and other communities of interest remained connected with each other within the same Town Council wards.

"Based on the redistricting criteria and data from the 2020 census, we evaluated how neighborhood populations needed to be shifted across our Island wards and came up with several alternatives for Town Council consideration. Input we gathered from the public between January and March of this year played a very important role in the shaping of the new districts," said Joshua Gruber, Deputy Town Manager.

"From the outset, the Town Council has worked to ensure a transparent, inclusive and thorough process," said Mayor John J. McCann. "The result is a ward map that combines input from the community with recommendations from staff and Town Council."

"Staff will now submit the adopted map to the Beaufort County Board of Elections and Voter Registration, which is responsible for providing citizens with new voter identification cards. The cards will have updated information on wards, voting precincts and polling locations," Gruber said.

The public can also search for their ward by entering their street address into an interactive map on the Town’s website at www.hiltonheadislandsc.gov/redistricting. Search results will identify both the resident’s ward and town council representative.

For more information about redistricting, contact Josh Gruber, Deputy Town Manager, at 843-341-4634 or JoshG@hiltonheadislandsc.gov.

Original source can be found here.